Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Tapas in Grand Millenium Hotel

We were invited to The the Grand Millenium Hotel's grand opening a few years ago and we noticed they had a restaurant called Tapas that specialised in...well, tapas. We thought it was a nice idea. We were interested to know what the food was like. But; unfortunately, we totally forgot about the restaurant.

I was invited by my clients for a workshop at the Grand Millenium Hotel. They also invited me to have dinner with them after the workshop and the dinner was held at Tapas. So, after a couple of years, I finally tried Tapas.

The main theme of the restaurant highlights on the colour red. But, the design & decor of the restaurant did not catch much of my attention. It seems to me that they did not know what to do with the space and at the last minute they decided to turn it into a restaurant.

I was disappointed to notice that the menu turned out to be a very confused. We all assumed that Tapas was a Spanish restaurant. Instead, there were so many choices from Mediterranean, Japanese, Thai & Italian foods. On top of that there was a tapas menu.

The first dish was grilled selection of shrimp, beef & chicken. The food was not warm. The beef was overcooked, the chicken was mediocre and the shrimp were grilled to death. A bad experience.

The next dish was a plate of pata negra ham. The preparation of the dish was very nice. The chef carefully carved the pata negra ham from the leg at the open kitchen. But, to my surprise the ham was dried out and barely had any flavour.

The next dish was grilled vegetables with a red pepper sauce. The grilled vegetables were very sad. The vegetables were cold, soft & mushy and had no taste. I had to smother the red pepper sauce over the vegetable trying to save them but that did not work. Just a sad dish.

The next dish was crab, shrimp & scallop salad. All three seafood were fresh, had good texture and tasted good. Finally, a good dish.

The next dish was deep fried chorizos. The chorizos was wrapped in a wonton style wrapper and deep fried to a deep brown. The chorizos were very crunchy (though a bit on the oily side). The chorizos themselves were tender but honestly had no taste. Something strange happened there.

The next dish was grilled salmon with soba noodles. The salmon was overcooked and the soba noodles were drenched in sauce making them too slimy. I was truly hoping this dish would turn out well but again was disappointed.

The next dish was grilled prawns with vegetable salsa. The prawns were very fresh, had a firm texture and actually tasted very good. The vegetable salsa was not bad. It added some freshness to the dish as well as colour.

The open kitchen where the chefs were preparing all the dishes.

Overall; the experience at Tapas was not good. Since, I was invited by my clients and I did not have the heart to tell them how confused the food was. Tapas wanted to be everything to everybody and it turned out that they were not focused. The menu choices were too many and everything turned out to be fusion food.

When the restaurant is called 'Tapas'; I already imagined a place that specialised in inventive tapas (of course), but also regional Spanish cooking using the freshest seafoods and meats. Maybe I was expecting too much from a restaurant called Tapas, maybe I should have been more open minded. But even when the tapas menu looked uninspired, had no love to it and no thinking behind it. I think I am right to be disappointed.

On top of all that; the waitresses were pushy. Always trying to suggest the most expensive items on the menu. Or suggesting Evian or the expensive sparkling water (I am sure they get commission if they sell more of those imported waters). The experience was more like dealing with car saleswomen. It would have been nice if the waitresses actually cared for and wanted their customers to be happy; rather than feeling they were there only to suck a quick baht out of us.